Frigid temperatures slow MCTV crews

It's all hands on deck at MCTV as crews are hard at work — sometimes outdoors in the frigid temperatures — restoring cable service.

Bob Gessner, MCTV president, said his employees are working under an emergency system during which lunch hours are reduced and crews are working modified schedules and overtime.

"It's not like a storm," he said. "My guys, they love it (to go out and do their jobs). They get really frustrated because they can't go out and fix it."

Safety of the workers takes precedent, he said, and nonessential work such as disconnections can wait until the temperatures go up.

"Some of the outside jobs we are just not doing," he said. "We will do that work down to 10 to 15 degrees, but when it is minus 10 with a wind chill, you have to make some changes."

For safety, crews have doubled up, he said.

Gessner said about 125 homes are without service.

"It's not a big number, but if you are one of the 125, it's really frustrating," he said. "Our customers are spoiled, and they deserve to be. They are use to us fixing a problem within an hour or two. It's been six to eight hours or longer. My techs are really frustrated. We are holding them back and telling them not to go out there."

Some of the problems, he said, could be in the middle of a farmer's field, which requires a worker to shoulder a ladder and walk hundreds of feet before putting up the ladder and fixing the problem.

"These are really life-threatening temperatures," he said.

The cold causes two problems, Gessner explained.

Electronics, he said, are meant to work within a temperature range, and in prolonged periods of cold they sometimes fail or do not work properly.

Also, in the super cold weather, the aluminum cable expands, causing it to break and snap or for a fitting to be ripped out where it's spliced to another cable, he said.

"It's usually easy to find (the problem) but the only way to fix it is to put it back together and now you have bare hands on metallic aluminum pipe. That's almost instant frostbite," he said.

Gessner said the workers also are working in the wind, in bulky clothes and are exposed while in the air, he said.

Crews also experienced problems with their equipment not working properly in the cold temperatures — a bucket truck stopped working because the hydraulic fluid froze.

Gessner expects his crews to be extremely busy Wednesday as temperatures moderate and work can proceed.